Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 18th, 1387. My name is Jonathan
Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the
University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's
Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made.
Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're
looking at a document from each day of the first
year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and
Queen Violant de Bar. We have so many documents
to choose from because of a gigantic digitization
of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon and the
abundance of paper that was available in the
14th century for the chancery scribes to write
down all kinds of documents about just dozens
and dozens every single day. Let's begin today's
document. Cartas Reales. That is the name of
the part of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
that has outgoing letters the actual letters
that were sent out. Sometimes they arrived back
to the Archive of the Crown of Aragon through
one way or another. and there's at times hundreds
of these, and not all of them have been digitized
or cataloged, so a lot of the Cartas Reales we
don't really know what's in there. Furthermore,
in a situation that has got me quite kerfuffled,
it seems that There's Cartas Reales on PARES,
the website for the grand digitization project
that the Spanish government undertook for several
archives across the country. The Archive of the
Crown of Aragon is only one of them. There's
on that section of the website a link for the
Cartas Reales of Pere the Ceremonious. There's
a link for the Cartas Reales for Martí, who took
over for Joan after Joan died. Succeeded him
to the throne would be the proper way of saying
that. Why? Because they didn't, Violant and
Joan didn't have any surviving male children,
and Martí therefore was the next in line to the
throne in 1396. All right, so Main point. There's
no link to get to the Cartas Reales for Joan.
And I don't know why. And I've tried to find
it some other way, doing some searches on PARES.
I haven't been able to find it. So today's document
is one of the Cartas Reales, but it's actually
not coming from PARES. It's coming from another
website put together by the Fondo Historico de
Aragon, a separate project that's actually taking
digitized material from the archive of the Crown
of Aragon, and also I think some other archives
too, and organizing and cataloging it. And they've
put up thousands of documents on their website,
and today's document is from there. It is super
interesting to look at because we get a chance
to see what the actual outgoing document looked
like, the one that would actually be delivered
to the recipient. Because remember, every single
document that we have looked at thus far is a
copy. It's a copy that the Chancery staff made
for the internal record keeping. So the actual
document the real one, I guess you could say
the original, got mailed out. And when I say
mail, it's not like they put it in like the postal
box or service. It's done by courier. So there
was a piece of paper that was given to the courier
and the exact words that were on that piece of
paper were copied into the registers that we've
been looking at for the previous 24 episodes
and the scribe that did the copying would put
in the probata, the attestation that what they
copied into the register was exactly what was
going out on the other piece of paper to the
recipient. Now today we have not only the front
of the paper, but also an image of the back of
the paper and its fold lines. So this is just
really neat to see. And you can tell on the the
front of it that the exterior of it and the way
that it was folded you can see the remnant of
the wax seal so when the document is being sent
out under the seal the secret seal or this one's
actually not the secret seal this is a different
kind of seal they're literally talking about
what kind of seal in wax is going to be dripped
onto the paper and then chunk stamped with, you
know, one type of seal or another. And depending
on the seal, I think it would be treated differently.
Like maybe, oh gosh, I'm just guessing here,
like only the most trusted couriers would be
allowed to carry the secret seal documents. That
I am not quite sure of. I have to research that
a little bit more. but in this instance it's
very clear on the exterior of the letter you
can see all that red and then it actually bleeds
through the paper so that when you're looking
at the interior of the letter you can see where
some of the wax kind of over time soaked through,
or maybe, you know, in that time it was also
soaking through, but it doesn't hurt the legibility
of the document. And you can also see where it
was folded. And these papers, they were folded
in special ways. And there's actually someone
that is at the University of New Mexico now,
an undergraduate studying medieval history, who's
really done a whole lot of research into how
the letters could be locked through folding and
how the seals worked. And I'm going to put a
link to his Etsy website where you can order
a authentically sealed letter from him. And he's
put a lot of research into it. It's pretty neat.
So there's just the whole other realm of sigillography,
the study of medieval seals, which actually can
provide a lot of very helpful information about
the larger context. Some of the symbols on the
seals are kind of, in a way, analogous to how
coins, the symbols on coins, would be chosen
and what that would be attempting to communicate
about the values of the society and the political
structures of the time. So there's a whole field
of sigillography, the study of seals, just like
there's the field of numismatics for the study
of the coins. This particular document, it's
a long Latin document and I did not transcribe
or attempt to translate it because the folks
over at the Fondo Historico de Aragon have summarized
it for me and I know I don't need to go too deeply
into this probably for my research purposes.
I can always come back to it later. But this
is a letter of protection. And it's a letter
of protection for someone from Zaragoza. And
what's interesting, I can give you a little bit
of a hint here. On the fourth line, like pretty
much in, well, like 75 % along the line, you'll
see a big capital C and then a punctuation mark
looks sort of like an exclamation point with
sort of a angle diagonal line for the exclamation
it's not actually an exclamation point it's just
marking the end of a phrase or a clause and then
there's another capital C that second capital
C starts the word carissimo but what comes before
is actually full of abbreviation and flourish
Cesar Augusta Cesar Augusta and That is the Latin
name for Zaragoza. So if you say Cesar Augusta
very fast, it turns into Zaragoza, and that's
where the name of Zaragoza Spain comes from.
Cesar Augusta. Augustus Caesar. They named the
place after Augustus in Roman times. So that's
a fun little continuity that you can share at
parties during trivia time. But there's one other
thing about this letter that I want to point
out. I had mentioned that this was not sent under
the secret seal. So on the last full line of
the letter, we've got the location and the date.
So I'm going to read that from the beginning
of the line. And then this next word I think
is ASSUETO. I think it's A -S -S -U -E -T -O.
Could be a C -O at the end. And then you've got
D -A, and then the date, X -V -I -I -I, Roman
numeral 18. And then... January the R is in the
macron above actually the It's it's just that
it's the Jan U There's a lot that's missing
from from from January there that's taken care
of by the macron and then the next is getting
into the year, so What I wanted to point out
was that almost all the documents we've been
looking at from the cancellaria real which is
to say the ones that are not the treasury records
the ones that we've been looking at that are
not the treasury records are really i think almost
all sigelo secretum or secreto. The secret seal,
which I've mentioned before, doesn't really mean
like top secret in the sense that we would think
of it today. It means more like private, but
it is a higher level of protection for the document.
And then also... One other thing I wanted to
mention was that there were different rules for
accessing different parts of the archive So if
say you wanted to consult the archive because
you had some kind of question about some kind
of Authorization that was done say like you know
ten years ago or something and you want to consult
the archive. You're not allowed to unless you
have a certain status in the government, you're
not allowed to access the Sigillo Secreto as easily
as you could some of the other seal levels. This
one is at a lower security seal level. It is
actually shared between some different registers.
So the officialium and the commune, these both
have this type of seal and I'm sure that it appears
elsewhere. Are you ready to hear about the level
of dedication that I'm bringing to this project?
I tried to find the chancery copy of this letter.
and I went to three different registers of Joan's,
and I couldn't find it. I spent probably two
hours flipping through, which was, I mean, that
was an educational experience. I learned a bit
more about the officialium, which I hadn't gotten
into before, but yeah. I had to go, because they're
out of order, in a span of 100 folios, which
is to say 200 digitized images. I saw a mix of
January and February documents in the officialium,
and that was register 1825. Oh, sorry. That was
not 1825. It was 1912. The officialium was 1912.
I also looked at the commune, which was 1825.
So I was going through and looking at the date.
And then also what is helpful about the officialium
is they put the person's name that the document
is about as a header. So that's nice. You don't
get that in the secret seal documents. So yeah,
I flipped through there and I'm telling you it
would be like four letters from February and
then four letters from January and then four
letters from early February and then four later
letters from the end of February and then January
back and forth back and forth and after 100 folios
I did not find this document So I got to kind
of the end of when January was appearing. And
yeah, like 90 folios in January was still appearing
in the middle of February. So yeah, there's no
shortage of documents. I mean, that's one thing
I can report after my fruitless treasure hunt
for the copy of this document. There's other
registers that it could be in. And if I have
some additional time on my hands, I will tackle
some of those other registers and see if I can
find the copy, because that would just be kind
of neat, you know, reuniting them in a way here
in digital format. But it was not meant to be
on this day when I was recording this episode.
So that brings us to a close of this installment
of the Historian's Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara
Companyona. If you are leaving with more questions
than you arrived with, I've done my job. Remember,
the motto of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction
guaranteed. So if you're feeling dissatisfied
because I did not attempt to transcribe and translate
this letter... Uh, wow. Give me a break. Come
on. But your feelings are your feelings. So,
okay. Dissatisfaction is guaranteed in that way.
But maybe you also want to know more about the
mail and couriers in the Middle Ages. There's
so much more about that. And actually, I don't
think I have any good articles handy. I went
to some conference presentations on that, but
I don't have any... articles ready to share about
that, so I am once again delivering on dissatisfaction
guaranteed. Hopefully I'll find one down the
road and I'll come back and edit the web page
for this episode and put that in. Speaking of
the web page for this episode, please visit the
website jonathanseyfried.net. There is a page
for each day's document which contains the image
and bibliography, sometimes my crutch of AI usage.
So all of that is there. Check it out. And there's
also a contact me form on that web page. I would
love to hear from you. What's your response to
all of this? Fill it out. I'll get back to you
and listen again tomorrow to hear about the next
day. in the first year of the reign of King Joan
I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the
meantime, take care.